It is that time of year again when you
search for the old 8mm movies from the 1940s and 50s that you converted to VHS tape and then to DVD’s. Even in 2020 there will be some people
visiting you can show them to. In 1965
Kodak came out with Super 8 movie camera and film, a big improvement over the
8MM. One of the prime movies taking time was Christmas, a time when everyone
came over on Christmas day and bragged about what they got for Christmas. It was time you would capture a number of
your Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents on camera visiting with your family. In looking at the movies I am always
surprised how everyone smoked, the room would be cloudy over with smoke. There was always that one Aunt you would see
running from the camera as she didn’t want to be photographed. The 8MM movie
was less than 5 minutes long and in shooting it you had to swap the film over
half way through as the film was really 16mm wide and you shot on both sides of
the film to get an 8MM roll of film. Of course you also had a key on the side
to wind the camera up to shot. Because
the film was so short you rarely spent much time homing in on a person. It had to a special thing to get more than 30
seconds of film time; new baby, a wedding, a birthday, etc.
When VHS tapes came out in the 1980s
you had a longer time to shoot, didn’t cost you anymore to spend 5 minutes on a
subject than it cost to spend 30 seconds on someone. Now you can embarrass your son or daughter
by showing movies of them when they were young even if they are approaching
social security age now.
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